Brad Ward: From Trauma to Triumph to Joy via Mindfulness, Presence and Authenticity!

Chapters

00:00
Introduction and Background

02:39
Coming Out Journey

04:44
Navigating Family Dynamics

06:59
Spiritual Awakening and Identity

09:32
Career Transitions and Purpose

14:33
Coaching and Trauma Recovery

19:19
Future Aspirations and Reflections

21:14
Navigating Nonprofit Challenges

23:00
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact

25:45
The Intersection of Religion and Identity

27:52
Exploring the Nature of Joy

33:02
The Role of Mindfulness in Healing

39:42
Life Lessons and Personal Guardrails

Summary

In this conversation, Brad Ward shares his journey of self-discovery, coming out, and the impact of trauma on his life. He discusses his transition from a career in banking to nonprofit work and coaching, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and healing. Brad also explores the concept of joy and its vulnerability, while reflecting on the lessons he has learned about kindness and compassion.

Takeaways

• Brad's coming out journey began at a young age.
• He faced challenges in reconciling his sexuality with his religious upbringing.
• Brad experienced trauma related to his identity and upbringing.
• He transitioned from banking to nonprofit work, finding purpose in helping others.
• Mindfulness plays a crucial role in managing trauma and emotions.
• Joy is a complex emotion that requires presence and authenticity.
• Brad emphasizes the importance of kindness and compassion in life.
• He believes in the power of community for LGBTQ+ individuals.
• Brad's work focuses on helping clients heal from trauma.
• He is currently writing a book exploring the nature of joy.

Bio

Brad Ward, PCC, TICC, TIRC brings 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience to his professional coaching practice. His style is all about inclusivity, support, and holistic growth. He reminds clients that leadership is found within: it's an inner journey. Drawing on his professional and personal experiences and insights, he helps his clients to expand their perception of themselves and their strengths, and to deepen their appreciation of who they are. Brad is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed through the International Coaching Federation, a Certified Trauma-Informed Coach and Certified Trauma-Informed Relationship Coach from Moving The Human Spirit, and a Certified Values Coach from Discover Your Values, LLC.

https://www.bradwardcoaching.com/

mailto:brad@bradwardcoaching.com

Contact Wilkinson:  BecomingWilkinson@gmail.com

Photo: Copyright Wilkinson/2025

Transcript

Wilkinson (00:00)
Brad Ward, how you doing buddy? I'm excellent. Finally have you here in my kind of double studio space. Let me get my other glasses on so I can see something here. So we met what, months ago? It had to be many months ago, A couple, yeah. So we were at a theater and you were sitting, you and your husband, Sanj, were sitting next to me.

Brad Ward (00:02)
Hey Wilkinson, I'm doing great, how are you?

I'm glad to be here.

Not many, a few.

Wilkinson (00:25)
You seem like a fun guy. told me a little what you're about and I thought, podcast. So, so let's jump into it. Tell us a little about yourself, where you grew up. you're coming out story, kind of jump into it and just, then I'll jump in and ask questions as we go along.

Brad Ward (00:30)
Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Sure, sure. So I'm Brad Ward.

I live in Palm Springs and I am a professional certified coach and nonprofit consultant for a living. I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. And my coming out story actually starts when I was about seven years old. We were watching All in the Family and it was the episode where Edith's cousin is coming to visit and he's gay. And I remember thinking, okay.

And during a commercial break, my mom turned to me and she said, do you know what gay is? And I said, yes, it's when a man loves a man or a woman loves a woman. And she said, no, it's homosexual. I didn't know what a homosexual was, but I knew I couldn't be one if that's what that would, if that's what reaction I would get from my mom. ⁓

Wilkinson (01:25)
Wait,

so as a kid you gave that definition, which was a great definition, but she rejected that. Wow.

Brad Ward (01:32)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And that was at age seven. So I even knew back then that I was gay. Fast forward many years to through high school and college, I was the best little boy in the world as it were. I always got good grades. I never really got in trouble with my parents. Because we grew up.

I grew up Southern Baptist, so we were at church every time the door was open. And I became quite well known because my dad was a deacon, my mom was on church staff. And so, you know, I was in the public eye a lot growing up in that church. I went to Oklahoma Baptist University thinking that I was going to be a minister of music in a Baptist church.

During my senior year at college, my advisor pulled me aside and said, if you can make a living doing anything other than music, do it. And I was horrified. And I said, am I that bad? And he said, no, it's not about your skill. It's about you are limited in what you can do if you want to be a musician. Don't be limited. Be unlimited.

I didn't understand that at the time. I was devastated because I was still struggling with my sexuality. still, I knew I was going on to seminary the next year, but I didn't know what was beyond that. And I was just turned into a tailspin. So graduated college with my music degree in hand.

Wilkinson (02:54)
Well,

wait a minute. is he saying that from a don't be a struggling artist viewpoint or what?

Brad Ward (02:59)
Yeah,

I think he was because he was able, even though he was still a musician in his probably 50s or 60s at that time, he had been able to parlay that into quite a successful career. He was on staff at the Crystal Cathedral. Do you remember that? Yes. So he was the music guy at the Crystal Cathedral for a

Wilkinson (03:16)
yeah.

Brad Ward (03:21)
And I was in California and I was in school in Oklahoma. So he, he, he was well compensated enough to be able to buy a plane to fly back and forth from Oklahoma to California every week. And yes. Yeah. So he was not doing too badly for himself. but he recognized that not everybody gets that chance. So he,

Wilkinson (03:21)
Now is that in California? It's California, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

He bought a plane? Wow.

Right.

Brad Ward (03:46)
His intentions were great. wish that the conversation had happened a little differently, but the tailspin was probably one of the best things that could have happened.

Wilkinson (03:54)
So what happened with you, what'd do with that info?

Brad Ward (03:56)
I went to seminary for a year. In my, that one year of seminary, I also could not stop thinking, I've got to understand this gay thing. I've got to understand it better. And so I started going out to gay bars and making friends in the gay community. And about spring time, just right about spring break, that year I was in seminary, I suddenly became very sick. And I thought,

Wilkinson (04:01)
you

Brad Ward (04:20)
shit, I've read about this AIDS thing and my gosh, I hope that I haven't contracted HIV.

Fortunately, it was not HIV, but what it did for me was it made me stop and rest. It was mononucleosis. Who at 22 years old gets mononucleosis? Except me.

Wilkinson (04:40)
Well, maybe somebody that's kissing boys, I don't know.

Brad Ward (04:44)
Maybe

so, yeah. Who could that have been? But the two weeks that I had to resting and recovering from that terrible, terrible illness gave me a chance to think and gave me a chance to say, why am I pursuing seminary if I know I'm gay and I don't want to pursue this Baptist life that I was given?

So after I recovered, I dropped out of all my classes and told my parents I was done with school and went in search of a job. And that was that. And it was during that year in seminary that I had my first kind of boyfriend. And he had met my parents. He was also in seminary. And...

So finally after Mono I've dropped out of school and everything, I said, okay, it's time for me to come out to my parents. And I had called my sister and said, Sherry, I'm about to come out to mom and dad. And she was like, what? I said, yeah. She said, wow, okay. Call me after it's over.

Wilkinson (05:45)
Wait a minute, so had you already come out to her? Did she know? Or was that news to her? Okay, all right.

Brad Ward (05:48)
She didn't know what she suspected. She suspected. We're close. So,

you know, she was supportive. So I told my parents that didn't go well. It went exactly as I expected it would go. And then I told my brother and it went worse with my brother. Yeah. Yeah.

Wilkinson (05:58)
Okay.

Is

he or was he religious?

Brad Ward (06:10)
He, it's not so much that he's religious. It's that he's, he doesn't, he just doesn't understand and doesn't want to understand to this day. So, that was, that was tough. but it, it was, that was probably one of the most healing things that I had done because suddenly I was not carrying a secret anymore. I was not carrying this news that nobody could know.

And it was liberating.

Wilkinson (06:32)
Mm.

Brad Ward (06:32)
absolutely liberating.

Wilkinson (06:33)
Were you close to him before you came out or not?

Brad Ward (06:36)
No, he's 15 years older than I am, so we were never really close. My sister's 12 years older than I am, and she and I were close, but my brother and I weren't. He was off to college by the time I was able to make any memories. you know, we... It's cordial, but there's nothing close in that relationship.

Wilkinson (06:39)
Okay.

you

So you were the baby of the family. And you were gay. How many times have I heard this? What's the deal? ⁓

Brad Ward (06:56)
yes.

Yes. I don't know, but I

was also kind of the golden child in my sister's eyes because she never saw that I was a good kid. She knew I didn't, wasn't a troublemaker or anything, but she never saw that I was straight A student and did everything that was expected of me. And so my parents were pretty

reasonable with me. They let me have more freedom than they let her have when she was the same age I was. So she only saw this golden child. We got lots of liberty from my parents, but I think I earned that liberty from my parents. you know, she, there's lots of, when you have kind of two generations of families, there's lots of difference between the way that parents raise kids in that intervening period of time.

So anyway.

Wilkinson (07:47)
I was just

thinking, because I have three kids, it's like by the time the third one rolls around, it's like, eh, it'll work out.

Brad Ward (07:53)
Yes, free range. But I mean, that's really the whole coming out story is that it took me years to get to the point that I could reconcile who I was with my beliefs about religion. And it was a few years after I came out that I decided I had to leave, probably a year after I came out that I decided I had to leave my parents' church. And then I went...

and found another Baptist church that was far more liberal than my parents' But I only stayed there a few short years, and then I said, why am I doing this? This is not who I am anymore. And so that's when my spiritual world began to expand. began to understand there was much more to life than being a Southern Baptist.

Wilkinson (08:33)
Really?

Brad Ward (08:33)
So,

I'm shocking, I know.

Wilkinson (08:35)
Shocking, it's totally shocking. All right, so you were in your 20s when you had your first gay experience?

Brad Ward (08:38)
Yeah.

I was. I was. And I mean, this is part of that good kid routine that I played because I thought, I'm carrying this secret that nobody can know. So I can't do anything to get myself in trouble or else everything will come out and I will be, I'll be found out and I'll be run out of town on a rail. So it was part of that tightly held image that I created for myself that I was holding onto.

Wilkinson (08:50)
Right.

Brad Ward (09:07)
There's a twist here though, because when I, you know, I told you I thought I was going to be a minister, that revelation came to me when I was six or seven years old, about the same time that I realized I was gay. Coming up to seminary, the end of my college career in seminary, when I thought, what am I gonna do? I'm supposed to be the, I'm supposed to be minister of music. I was totally lost about what I was going to do with my life. And suddenly my purpose,

was shattered, it no longer had any meaning to me. But things being what they are and me being able to recognize through the help of people and friends and a larger circle of musicians in Fort Worth, I came to realize that my purpose didn't have to be connected to a specific church, religion, faith, or anything. My purpose could just be my purpose.

And so my purpose is to be of service to people. And I did that first as a banker, then for 20 years in the nonprofit sector. And now I do it as a coach, supporting people to be resilient after trauma, to develop human centered leaders and to help people transform their lives.

Wilkinson (10:14)
Hmm.

So you, when did you leave Texas?

Brad Ward (10:16)
When I was 40, I stayed in Texas for a

Wilkinson (10:19)
Wow. And you were in Fort Worth that whole time?

Brad Ward (10:22)
The whole time. Yeah. I, Fort Worth is a strange place. Um, a lot of people grow up there and stay there for life. Um, not many of my, my, my peers in high school left Fort Worth for good early on. Um, but a few of us did. Or a a few did, and then I followed later when I was 40 and I'm so glad I did.

Wilkinson (10:42)
Right.

So did you go from Texas to Palm Springs or what? Okay.

Brad Ward (10:47)
lived in Washington

DC for 10 years, which is where I met Sam and we were together there for a few years before we decided to move here.

Wilkinson (10:53)
Okay.

Where did you meet?

Brad Ward (10:57)
We met at a bar and we met and I was with my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time who was his neighbor. And then that was the first, that was the last time I saw Sanj for a while. And then I was chatting with somebody online and we decided to meet for a date and we were sitting across the table from each other and it was the coldest night of the year in DC ever, ever, ever. It was like 12 degrees and the wind was howling and I didn't have a car.

So I was walking to this restaurant where I was going to meet Sam and I was like, I can't do this. I'm to go home. But something in me said, no, go to the restaurant, go to the restaurant. So I trudged through the cold and the wind and got to the restaurant. Yes. Yes.

Wilkinson (11:38)
So it was Sanj that you were meeting. So you

had broken up with a boyfriend at that point.

Brad Ward (11:43)
He moved off to Europe at that point. Yeah, it was a tumultuous few years. But we were sitting across the table from each other and we both said, where have we met before? This is too familiar. And then we all roads lead back to Mark. so Mark was the Sanchez neighbor, he was my boyfriend and poof, there's the story. So yeah.

Wilkinson (11:45)
Okay, okay.

Brad Ward (12:08)
And we've been together ever since. made all my mistakes, not all my mistakes, but I made my stupid relationship mistakes before I was 40, thank goodness. And now it's about healing and growth in community.

Wilkinson (12:10)
That was how long ago.

and how long have you two been together now?

Brad Ward (12:22)
Let's see, almost 18 years. Together 18 years and married for coming upon 16 years.

Wilkinson (12:31)
Cool. So you went from DC to Palmstrings and what brought you here?

Brad Ward (12:33)
Yes.

Palm Springs. It's beautiful. We'd both been here separately and together. We actually tried to move here in 2007 or 2008, I guess it was. No, it was right after the crash, 2009. We tried to move here in 2009. We got all of our money together. There was a condo that was ready and we were going to go.

We thought we'd at least buy a vacation property and we couldn't get financing because the condo complex was in possession of the bank. So they weren't financing. So that fell through. We knew we wanted to live here. And so a few years later, we said, why are we staying in Washington? And we want to be on the West coast. So we just put ourselves on a three year plan. If at the end of three years, we're not in Palm Springs, we're just going to cut ties and go. Sanj is in a resume out here.

the first to the first employer that he saw that was hiring and he got the job and we were here in three months.

Wilkinson (13:33)
Wow.

Brad Ward (13:34)
Yeah, we were in the middle of a house remodel in DC too. lots of things had to be wrapped up and tidied up and boy, it felt like a whirlwind to get out here.

Wilkinson (13:42)
So you had to sell the DC place?

Brad Ward (13:45)
Mm-hmm.

Wilkinson (13:46)
Well, 09

or 10 or whatever it was, it wouldn't have been a good time to do that.

Brad Ward (13:50)
No, it wouldn't have been. we were, the place at that time, we thought we'd just have a vacation house out here. But you know, when we, when we were deciding we were going to move, we were going to move. And that was all there was to it. Lots of our friends were like, aren't you scared to move across the country? What if things don't work out? And we were like, if things don't work out, they don't work out. We find other places to live. So what?

Wilkinson (14:09)
Right, exactly.

Brad Ward (14:10)
It didn't

dawn on us to be scared to come out here.

Wilkinson (14:12)
Living from a fear-based perspective is not a good idea.

Brad Ward (14:16)
It is really challenging and I at times find myself doing it too, even though I don't really think I have a lot of fear. At times I find myself thinking, what am I fearful of this? There's nothing to be afraid of. I can just do this. I don't have to have anybody's permission except my own.

Wilkinson (14:34)
I just heard a quote, I forget who said it or where I heard this, but they said something like, I've had a lot of trauma in my life that never happened. But I mean, they've had trauma, but the point was that I was all in their head and they worried about it and did all this crap and nothing came to be. It was like, you can't live there.

Brad Ward (14:42)
Well, lucky for that person because...

yeah.

Well, yeah.

As Brene Brown says, you can't dress, rehearse tragedy.

Wilkinson (15:01)
Huh. Although some people do.

Brad Ward (15:03)
Some people do and that's unfortunate. I mean we all tend to catastrophize to some degree because when I see a challenge in front of me I think what's the worst that could happen? What's the best that could happen? And let me average that out in the middle and that's where I'll aim for. But some people never get beyond that worst thing that could happen and then they bring about what they don't want.

Wilkinson (15:04)
Yeah.

Right.

Hmm.

Okay, let's talk about your work. So you went from banking to coaching. Was that the jump or was there something in between?

Brad Ward (15:29)
No, no, there were lots of

banking and then I went into the nonprofit sector and worked there for 20 years. And the nonprofit sector was good to me. It was a place where I found purpose, where I found meaning, where I found community, where I found fulfillment in my work. And I had only one job.

Wilkinson (15:34)
⁓ that's right.

Brad Ward (15:47)
one job, two jobs in the nonprofit sector that I absolutely hated. And it wasn't that I hated the job, it was that I hated the toxic environment in which I had to work. And so, you know, the work was good. The environment was terrible. was awful, stifling. And so, you know, I did what any person in a toxic environment would do. I left as soon as I could. you know,

I got such great experiences working in the nonprofit sector. The last job I had in Washington, I was the Compliance Officer for AIDS United. And in my portfolio of programs, I had grantees all across the country who were doing innovative things for everything from prevention through primary care, through all kinds of ways to prevent HIV from happening and care for people with HIV. And I got to see lots of great

clinical operations and organizations that were doing cool, cutting edge, innovative, groundbreaking, fun work. And I got to be part of that. And I was so fortunate and so grateful that that was what I got to do for a living was travel around and support these organizations that were doing good things. It was fantastic. I loved that.

Wilkinson (16:54)
And then

one day you said, love this, I want to do what?

Brad Ward (16:57)
One day

we said, love this, but it's time for us to move to Palm Springs. So when I learned that my job wouldn't travel with me, that's when I decided I had to become a coach. So that's the third, I'm in my third career, which is really all my careers have been about supporting, have been about being of service to people.

Wilkinson (17:02)
Okay.

So talk about it, what do do? Yep.

Brad Ward (17:17)
In my practice,

I see people who have had traumatic events in their past. Most of my expertise, because it's my personal experience, is working through spiritual and religious trauma. I didn't even recognize that what I had experienced in my life was trauma until a few years ago. when I did, boy.

all the things that I had experienced suddenly started to make sense. this was trauma. No wonder, no wonder I have difficulty regulating my emotions. No wonder this, no wonder that. And so it all started to make sense to me once I understood what trauma was and went through some healing to try to manage it. know, trauma, once you've experienced it, it stays with you.

even after healing, it's still there. It's like an injury that is in the background waiting to be awakened by a trigger. And it's in those triggered moments that you've got to have either really good rescue mechanisms or you go down the rabbit hole of trauma.

Wilkinson (18:20)
I've heard that trauma is carried in our cells. Do you agree with that?

Brad Ward (18:24)
Yeah, it is. Everybody carries it in a different place. I tend to carry mine in my, my Pilates instructor who helped me figure this out, I carry mine in my fascia, the connective tissue between muscle and bone. And it causes me to be tense a lot. And if I'm not paying attention, I will find myself in very tense body positions.

Wilkinson (18:29)
Uh-huh.

Hmm. ⁓

Brad Ward (18:49)
So it's still, even though I've done a lot of healing and transforming

from that traumatic past, it's my body is poised and ready to deal with trauma at any moment by tensing up and being ready to bolt or fight. I'm a fighter. I'm not a fleer. I'm not a fainter. I'm not a fauner. I fight.

Wilkinson (19:03)
Hmm.

Brad Ward (19:08)
So that's.

Wilkinson (19:08)
Have you

ever done any plant medicine?

Brad Ward (19:11)
I've not, and I'm very interested in doing it. I've just recently met, I've got a new friend who is an herbal medicine guru, so I'm gonna be talking to him about

Wilkinson (19:19)
What are you gonna do?

Brad Ward (19:20)
I don't know. He and I haven't even talked about what might be possible or what might be good for me, but I'm interested in hearing what he has to say about

Wilkinson (19:27)
Yeah, I want to do ayahuasca in the next probably year for sure.

Brad Ward (19:31)
I want to do an ayahuasca ceremony too because I think that there are still things that I have not seen yet that I would like to see and I have to be ready to just see them for what they are and not be scared of them. There's nothing to be scared of because they can't hurt me. They're just there. I need to look at them and say, okay, now I understand it.

Wilkinson (19:46)
Right.

Brad Ward (19:52)
So we'll see.

Wilkinson (19:53)
So what do you like about your job?

Brad Ward (19:54)
You know, it is supremely rewarding for me to have a client sit across the Zoom screen or across the desk from me and say, I know what to do. I'm not scared. I've got this. Because that means that they have moved beyond where they were when they came to

and they recognize their own capabilities. And that is the biggest reward.

I think I have the best job in the world for that reason.

Wilkinson (20:20)
How do you find clients?

Brad Ward (20:21)
I have contracts with, I had two contracts with a couple of different EAP providers and one coaching, kind of a boutique coaching firm that works with employers. And some of those go on to become private clients, but otherwise it's my private clients or just people that, who are connected to me somehow, or who have heard about me through my other clients.

So lots of personal connections, lots of personal referrals. don't advertise much, which is the next big place I need to push myself into to get some advertising locally because I do want more clients. do want to make more. Maybe a podcast. That would be great. Know anybody who does a podcast.

Wilkinson (21:00)
Maybe a podcast would help.

Huh.

Let me think

about it. I'll get back to you. So talk about your job some more. So what should we know about it?

Brad Ward (21:14)
Well, the other half of my job is nonprofit consulting. I do a lot of work with local nonprofit organizations. With a 20-year experience in nonprofit sector, I've seen a lot, I've done a lot, and I bring a lot of real-world experience to the table because I often find that what happens with nonprofit staff is they stumble into their jobs accidentally.

They maybe they volunteered for an organization and suddenly they are being paid by the organization to do a job, but they've never had any training in, in, in, to understand how to do their job or to understand what's different about the nonprofit sector than for the for-profit sector. Um, the other thing I find is that board members approach board service with great intentions, but they don't always know.

exactly what's expected of them or what the IRS expects of board members of not-for-profit organizations. And so I do a lot of work to help organizations focus their board expectations, board job descriptions, the work of their governance committee, their board, on what is expected by the Internal Revenue Service so that they keep their 501c3 status. Because they're very specific about what's expected.

Wilkinson (22:08)
Hmm.

Brad Ward (22:27)
and what kinds of things the organization has to demonstrate in their 990 and how they have to maintain, what kind of policies they have to have, what kind of procedural things they have to put in place, what kind of safeguards they have to put in place. Because really in the nonprofit sector, your currency is public trust. And once that's broken, it's very hard to repair. And so the key is reputation and damage, damage prevention and reputation control.

Wilkinson (22:54)
Right? Huh.

Brad Ward (22:56)
No.

Go ahead.

Wilkinson (22:57)
You mentioned something about trauma before. Talk some more about that.

Brad Ward (23:00)
Yeah, yeah that whole thing I Didn't realize it but every time when I was growing up in the Southern Baptist Church Every time I heard somebody say something negative or derogatory about a gay person I didn't realize that was I knew that they were talking about me But I didn't realize that that little micro aggression would someday yields big

And so that was kind of an aha for me was, all the death by a thousand paper cuts, that's real. And every single person who said, gay people have a downfall in the American family's value system, or they're all going, too bad none of them are going to heaven, or whatever it was they were saying. ⁓ Every one of those was a wound to me. And because it was such a secret for me growing up,

Wilkinson (23:28)
Hmm.

Right.

Brad Ward (23:46)
couldn't say, hey, you're talking about me.

So that all accumulated and really became trauma. And that is, I have what is called complex trauma, which is repeated and extended exposure to things that are traumatic for somebody. So fortunately, my trauma didn't disable me completely.

But it certainly did leave its mark on me and how I form relationships and how I regulate my emotions and how I react to things around me. And most importantly, how I viewed myself. I never felt I was enough.

I never felt like I was good enough, smart enough, measured up enough because I was carrying this terrible secret that I was gay. And boy, if I could talk to my 17 year old self, what I would say now.

Wilkinson (24:31)
Hmm.

Right.

What would you say?

Brad Ward (24:45)
I would say, it's okay. You are who you are. And that is who you're supposed to be, so it's okay. Don't let anybody else tell you that you don't belong. You belong where you want to belong.

Wilkinson (24:58)
you

Brad Ward (24:59)
So that's what I would say to my members.

Wilkinson (25:00)
Or maybe a 17 year old will hear this.

Brad Ward (25:03)
I hope a 17 year old hears this. I hope a 16 year old and an 18 year old and a 21 year old and whatever age, a 46 year old, I don't care. I hope that whoever you are out there that you hear, you are who you are, you are who you're supposed to be and it's okay. And there are people who will welcome you into their community whenever you're ready to join it.

Wilkinson (25:10)
Right.

So on the trauma you're talking about, you think that's, you're talking about basically it's from your religious stuff, the bullshit, right? Primarily.

Brad Ward (25:32)
Yeah,

distinguish between religious trauma and spiritual trauma this way. Spiritual trauma causes you to lose faith in yourself. Religious trauma causes you to lose faith in religion. I'd lost both.

Wilkinson (25:39)
Okay.

I was gonna say, I bet a lot of guys have lost both.

Brad Ward (25:48)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's the hypocrisy of the pastor who molests a teenage girl who is allowed to keep his job. It's the hypocrisy of the minister who pays for his mistress's abortion while his wife is languishing at home and he's still preaching about pro-life, pro-life, pro-life. It's the hypocrisy that eats me up.

Wilkinson (26:10)
Right.

That's really bad today.

Brad Ward (26:12)
worse than ever in my lifetime, I think. But that's not mine to worry about.

I can't do anything about their hypocrisy. I can just drink tea when things go south.

Wilkinson (26:20)
and hopefully help some of the trauma survivors.

Brad Ward (26:22)
I'd

rather help people along the way who don't know what to do when they realize that they're gay or lesbian or transgender or bisexual or gender non-binary or whatever you are. Sexual minorities, we have to stick together because we're at some point we're all we've got. And so we've got to be unified.

Wilkinson (26:43)
Yeah.

Brad Ward (26:46)
in how we support each other.

Wilkinson (26:47)
So what's your take on the cultural climate right now? Everything going on.

Brad Ward (26:53)
I have a sense that this won't last long. I don't know what's going to happen, but I have a sense that it's gonna get worse before it gets better. But then there will come a time when we turn the corner and it's gonna be okay. But we're in for a rough ride right now.

Wilkinson (27:10)
think that probably one of the biggest problems for me is the fact that half of the country is behind all this bullshit.

Brad Ward (27:16)
Half of the country is an exaggeration, I You won by a slim margin. So there was no mandate.

Wilkinson (27:19)
Yeah.

I'm not saying there's a mandate, but there's a lot of people that voted and I don't get me going on that, but I still think the whole election thing was fishy, but that's me. You got a jillionaire buying a election, come on, but whatever.

Brad Ward (27:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that same billionaire who disowned his trans child.

Wilkinson (27:43)
You know, does he have a transphobia? I didn't know that. Huh. Wow.

Brad Ward (27:46)
Yes.

Yeah, Muska is a trans

child and he's dysondered.

Wilkinson (27:53)
Nice.

Wow. All right, let's flip the switch and change topics here. You're writing a book. Tell me about it.

Brad Ward (27:54)
Yeah.

Yes, I am writing a book. My book is

about the human experience of joy.

Wilkinson (28:03)
.

Brad Ward (28:05)
The reason I think, well first of all, I ask one simple research question to about 250 people. And my research question is, my current authority on human emotions is Brene Brown. And what she says about joy is, it's the most vulnerable emotion we experience. What makes joy vulnerable?

So that's my research question. Wilkinson, what makes joy vulnerable to you?

Wilkinson (28:27)
You got me on that one.

Well, I mean, if I'm projecting joy, then someone else is gonna be jealous or they don't want me to have that or something. I would think that would be a problem. I don't know.

Brad Ward (28:38)
Yeah, you've hit into one of four areas that all of the responses fell neatly into one of one or more of four areas. and it's fascinating because we don't think of joy as, mean, I used to think of joy as being like happiness on steroids. That's not what it is. It is so hard to define and so unwieldy that we really don't have a good definition for it.

Wilkinson (28:47)
Okay.

Brad Ward (29:03)
So in my book, I offer one that I think works, but I'll let you be the judge. that is, joy is the recognition and celebration of what is.

Wilkinson (29:15)
Hmm. I can see that. Right?

Brad Ward (29:16)
Because in the moment of joy, it's

ebullient with emotion and also there's an underpinning of gratitude because this is around you or this is what you're experiencing in this moment. So that's my definition of joy. The four areas that responses to my research question fell into were authenticity, control, conditioning, and so forth.

Wilkinson (29:39)
You could have a chapter on each of those, I'm sure.

Brad Ward (29:41)
I do. do.

Authenticity was by far the most popular response. you know, I think something like 50%, almost 50 % of the responses included some reference to authenticity. And that is if I'm being joyful, that's my authentic self-showing and I don't know how to handle it.

Wilkinson (29:46)
How so?

Well, what came up for me when you're talking about that is I was thinking really to be joyful, you have to be in the present.

Brad Ward (30:11)
Yeah, you do. You have to be.

Wilkinson (30:13)
Because

you're, I mean, you're not, I mean, maybe you'd be happy if you're thinking about something good that might happen in the future or, that was really nice, you know, the warm puppy in my past, but really you need to be grounded and present, I would think.

Brad Ward (30:26)
You do. And joy is momentary.

You know, we don't have any control over it. We don't have any way to know when it's coming or when it will leave us, but it's there and it's there for a flash. And so if you're not present, you don't get to see it. You don't get to experience it.

which also relates to trauma because trauma takes you out of the present into another time. And if you aren't present, you can't experience joy.

Um, yeah, it's fascinating. but I do explore all four of those areas in some detail and, uh, you know, the self-worth one is the one that troubles me the most because I think one of the things that I took away from religion was I'm not worthy. And that's followed me for all my life. Um, but if you

One of the things I think joy does is it reveals to you your wholeness, your perfection, and we're unprepared to see that and experience it.

Wilkinson (31:25)
Right.

you

Brad Ward (31:27)
So that's one of the great mysteries of this emotion that we call joy.

Wilkinson (31:32)
When do think your book will be finished?

Brad Ward (31:34)
I'm optimistic I can do it this year. It's been a hard ride because there's a lot of healing that I had to do to ride it and I've been riding on it for two years now. So I'm at a point where I think I can finish it this year now.

So I'm energized about it again. When I first decided to do it, I was what I call a scare-sighted, both scared and excited at the same time. And I got a good chunk of it written in that first year. And then I hit a point where something...

Wilkinson (31:53)
Right. Okay.

Brad Ward (32:02)
Something triggered me and I thought, I'm not ready to write this chapter yet. So I had to take some time off and do some more healing and come back to it. And I've not been as committed to it since then, but once I realized a few weeks ago how close I am to having my shitty first draft manuscript complete, I've got more energy for it now. So I think I can crank it out.

Wilkinson (32:25)
Have you been in touch with any publishers you're going to go self to start or what?

Brad Ward (32:30)
I have. I'm planning to publish through, now I can't remember the name of the publishing company. She's an independent publisher in Connecticut, and she's a certified lesbian, gay business enterprise as well. she reached out to me a few years ago before I decided to write a book and said, I'm new to the gay and lesbian chamber. I'm just...

introducing myself to people and you sound, I'm interested in hearing about your business. It's Gentie Grace and Publish Your Purpose is the name of the publisher. And that's who's gonna publish my book. So I'm excited.

Wilkinson (32:53)
Huh.

Is she saying, where's the manuscript? Let's go. Come on, come on.

Brad Ward (33:03)
She's not putting any

pressure on me, I'm putting pressure on myself. She gets it, she's written her own books, she knows that sometimes it takes a while to get a book out of yourself, but I think the first book is the hardest. And so if I can get the first book done, there might be a second book in me, I don't know.

Wilkinson (33:06)
Okay. Okay.

Sounds good. What else do you want to share?

Brad Ward (33:19)
Yeah.

Um, you know, one of the things that I think has helped me in managing my life after I realized that I've been healed from trauma is mindfulness. And so I want to talk a little bit about what mindfulness is and what, what it involves and what it entails and what's required of you if you're going to practice mindfulness, because it's not just

Wilkinson (33:47)
Okay.

Brad Ward (33:49)
It's more than meets the eye. Mindfulness is actually the management, active management of seven different things that are part of our human experience. Managing attention, managing automatic patterns, managing conflict and acceptance, managing our goals in the future, managing compassion and managing our ego.

Wilkinson (33:58)
Really.

Brad Ward (34:08)
All seven of those things get in the way.

So it's, it's a fascinating way to, and this is not my, my doing this is I'm, I'm a mindfulness instructor was trained by positive psychology and, and they, their training is really, really dynamic, I think. but this is, it's something that I teach to my clients and, and one of the things that probably the biggest and hardest thing to wrangle it's the top two attention.

and automatic behaviors. You know, our attention wanders all the time, but it can be trained and it's a constant thing. And the way I relate it, it's just like healing is a choice that you make every day. Mindfulness is a choice that you make every minute of every day in order to practice it well. It's a practice because it is an ongoing development in your life.

Wilkinson (35:00)
So what is mindfulness to you? What's the definition of it?

Brad Ward (35:00)
Thanks.

It's holding your undivided attention on something moment by moment without judgment to understand what's happening right now. That's it.

simple. It's presence, but it's more than presence. It's actively giving yourself permission to be present without having anything else get in

Um, I don't know if you remember the Myers-Briggs test. Um, I, I'm an, I all my life have tested as an ENTJ and that TJ, the thinking and judgment part is what I battle a lot. Um, it took me years to get judgment under control and every now and then I'll still say something and I'm like, why am I going back there? Um, but judgment is really.

Wilkinson (35:26)
yeah.

Brad Ward (35:50)
I think that's one of the things that I noticed in today's political discourse is so much judgment about everything.

Wilkinson (35:56)
So

on Myers-Briggs though, is judgment really what we think of when we say judgment? It's different.

Brad Ward (36:01)
Judgment

is the need to have a label or the need to do things a specific way. It's the rules kind of thing. If you're a rule follower, you probably are heavy in judgment because there's a right way, there's a wrong way. Except that's not true either. There are lots of right ways. There are lots of wrong ways. It's just that you don't have to label.

Wilkinson (36:24)
So is ENFJ a thing? I think that's what I am.

Brad Ward (36:27)
Yes, that's

you're a feeler, not a thinker and strength. Of course you are, but that's your, your predominant thing is, is feeling. And what's funny is we are feeling creatures who think not thinking creatures who feel. So somehow my thinking took over my feeling and which led to years of having emotional experiences.

Wilkinson (36:31)
Yeah, well, but I'm also a thinker. Yeah.

When I owned my own business, when I was up in the Northwest, I had a real estate company. the coach that I had, so Gene Myers came in town and was doing, it was like a brain test, you know about this one? So, and this was like, I don't know how many years ago, a long time ago. But yeah, so the deal was, I mean, everything's in a quadrant. So it'd be like, right brain would be like artist.

no, wait. So salesman pastor is one artist, engineer, accountant. So the deal was find out where you are, like 80%. Of course, salesman minister. Of course, that's where I was a little over it, but on the opposite, which I think it might've been the accountant, I was just under 80. And on the other try was at 80. It was like really weird, like all four, which

Brad Ward (37:41)
Wow, you're like

a perfectly balanced being.

Wilkinson (37:44)
Well, the thing is, he said that's a perfect profile for a CEO, actually, because you can get along with everybody. However, and this is the thing that helped me the most, is I realized that the right brain and the left brain were fighting each other up here. For example, in my real estate business, I'm very entrepreneurial, so I have all these creative ideas, da-da-da-da.

And then the accountant in me is going, hell no, too much money. You know, you can't do that. Right. Right. Want to go in my den and read a book, but I have to straighten the den before I could sit on a relax to read the book. So it was, but once I realized that and like, you know, all these reports I was having myself do, which was making me crazy. mean, you got to do your taxes. got to do the multiple listing stuff. That's it. The other reports, I don't need them. It's me. I'm the boss. I don't, I'm not doing it.

Brad Ward (38:12)
Yeah.

Wilkinson (38:37)
So it really changed things for me. It was really good.

Brad Ward (38:40)
Huh, you know, it's interesting. I've never done any testing like that except for the Myers-Briggs. ⁓ But I'd be curious. I I love to find out about myself. It's this kind of, I mean, I look at myself as an onion that you have to peel the layers through to understand yourself. And while I've come a long way, I still recognize that there's so much more to really understand about self. And you know, that's...

Wilkinson (38:46)
Right, right.

Brad Ward (39:03)
When I teach mindfulness, one of the ways I teach it is first become aware of what you are and how you respond and what's going on with you. Because awareness is the first step. If you're not aware, you can't do anything with it. But building your awareness of yourself is really important. that applies regardless of whether you're practicing mindfulness.

Wilkinson (39:12)
Right.

Brad Ward (39:24)
We often, find myself going, or did find myself going through life without much awareness happening. I would just, I was on automatic pilot so much and I missed a lot of things in life. So, you know, understanding what awareness is and how to build it for myself, how to cultivate it, to hold it, how to treasure it has really been kind of an eye-opener for me.

Wilkinson (39:33)
Right.

Hmm.

Right.

Cool. All right, we're at the point where I ask you a question. What have you learned in your life? What do you live by? What are your guardrails?

Brad Ward (39:50)
Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Gosh, one of the things I've learned in life is that the more I learn, the more I learn there is to learn. So it's a never ending journey and I'm glad I'm on it. My guardrails.

kindness and compassion. If I stop being kind and compassionate to people, I'm in trouble. I've lost my humanity at that point. I can't be a human if I don't have kindness and compassion in my heart and in my actions and in my words. So I really try to live by that. I fail, but I do try and that's my intent is to

Wilkinson (40:16)
Right.

Brad Ward (40:32)
deliver kindness and compassion.

Wilkinson (40:34)
Kindness is my thing. That's kind of what I'm I boil down to that now fall now fall of the Christians out there and the Political scene would grab a hold of that idea It'd be really cool

Brad Ward (40:38)
Yeah.

Yeah,

you know, I want a big mirror to hold up to them sometimes.

Wilkinson (40:53)
Any parting thoughts?

Brad Ward (40:54)
Wow, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and thanks for being a great guy.

Wilkinson (41:01)
Thank you. It's been good All right, sir. We'll put your info where people can find you if they want to know more We'll put that in the show notes and a little bit of a bio and stuff like that. So Great. So thanks for coming in. Appreciate it Okay

Brad Ward (41:07)
Great.

My pleasure, thank you.